


the theory of relativity

by EmeraldTulip



Series: Curiosity Voyage [10]
Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: F/M, First Kiss, Gen, M/M, Man Out of Time, Mild Blood, Speculation, Stranger Things 4, Time Loop, Unreliable memory, basically I hate time travel so I hope the duffer bros do something else time related instead, collection of four drabbles all happening at the same moment, if thats what you need to know, the gay stuff is in chapter 1, the party stuff is in chapter 2
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2020-12-24 10:10:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 3,415
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21097757
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EmeraldTulip/pseuds/EmeraldTulip
Summary: Time is slipping, restarting, and tearing itself apart. Even worse, the shadows are coming after them, because it senses psychics and power and refuses to lose. It almost feels like the world is ending, except for the fact that they're starting to see everything that comes after it.(1: Will and Mike2: El, Max, Lucas, and Dustin3: Robin, Steve, Nancy, and Jonathan4: Joyce)





	1. Will

**Author's Note:**

> what with all the stuff the stranger things twitter has been giving us (looooooots of time travel hints) and I dont like where this is going,,,, I did it myself
> 
> basically, instead of the characters time traveling, time is simply unraveling (like clarke suggested it could if a gate was opened between worlds). the gang is gonna have to survive, and not get lost in time. I hope im not mean to them!
> 
> anyway. enjoy!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mike can't keep up. Will can't lose him.

Time slips through his fingers as he runs, tripping over seconds and minutes and hours of what is to come and what already has. Mike keeps up with his pace, but every once in a while his movements will turn sluggish, choppy, and Will squeezes his hands into fists and thinks _no, not him._

_Anything else, but not him._

“I’ll catch up!” Mike’s voice rings out, suddenly sounding distant, and Will realizes that something is horribly wrong.

Mike abruptly stumbles over something more concrete than a chronologic blip, tumbling to the ground. In the split second it takes for Will to stop, he’s already ten feet away.

“Go, Will!” Mike yells, his fingers scrabbling at the tree roots as he tries to keep moving. _Keep moving._ “Just listen!”

But _I’ll catch up_ is a lie, because time is already snaking through his bones, mixing up the way Will’s mind perceives him. Mike will never catch up if Will leaves now, thrown into the past or future or some other hell.

So he bolts back, outpacing the shadows nipping at Mike’s heels, yanking up to his feet. “Come on,” he says, feeling the clamminess of Mike’s palm in his, and they run.

“Will, just listen,” Mike gasps again, and his free hand is pressed to his side. “I’m slowing you down, you have to leave me.”

“No.” His throat is tight from lack of oxygen, but also from tears. Something pulses in his fingertips.

Mike goes crashing to the ground again, his hand yanked from Will’s by gravity, and he rolls into a tree. Will is prepared this time, crouching next to him.

“Mike, we gotta go, you gotta get up,” he urges, grasping Mike’s shoulders. “We can’t stop, we have to keep moving—”

Mike’s hand comes away from his ribs, and Will at first doesn’t see the bloodstain spreading across his shirt, just the red on his fingers.

“If I stay,” Mike says, and his voice is astonishingly level despite the cough that fights its way out of him. A spray of blood speckles his lips. “If I stay back here, you’ll get there in time to stop the monster.”

Will can feel his head shaking frantically, _no_. “What if you get—get stuck somewhere else in the timeline? What if I can’t find you?”

“I’ll be fine.” Mike’s gaze is dark and steadfast. “As long as you can beat it, I’m gonna be fine.”

Time stutters and skips again, the ground shifting beneath Will’s knees, and when everything steadies again Mike’s hands are on his face. Will can feel sticky blood on his cheek and he can’t seem to care, but he instinctively knows a moment has been stolen from him. He wishes he knew what Mike had just said.

All he knows is that Mike is bruised and battered, curled behind a tree, and a monster is chasing them. If Will leaves, and it finds Mike, Will loses his best friend. Mike’s unbloodied thumb ineffectively wipes at the grime on Will’s cheek. “Go.”

He thinks Mike may have pushed him away—that, or time has played another trick on him, or perhaps both, because everything twists so fast he gets vertigo and before he can even blink he’s running again.

There’s blood on his mouth. He thinks he remembers an _I love you._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part two is coming up: the party


	2. El

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> With Mike and Will gone, El holds the others even closer.

El wakes on the ground, curled into Max’s side. The air stings her lungs and she coughs, a metallic taste filling her mouth, and she wipes her tongue on her filthy flannel.

“Max?” She tugs on the girl’s sleeve.

Max’s face scrunches, and El notices Lucas grasping Max’s other hand. “What happened?” he asks, blinking grit from his eyes.

“Time hit us again,” El grumbles, rubbing Max’s shoulder. “The closer we get, the more it fights back. At least it didn’t split us.”

“Yeah,” Dustin agrees, pulling his leg out from under Lucas, “but where are Mike and Will?”

El’s blood runs cold at that, and she tugs her jacket closer as she looks around for her brother. “Will?” she calls. “Will! Mike!”

Dustin joins, but there’s no answer; their words echo hollowly around the trees. Every time El blinks, she starts to see the spores of the Upside Down in the air, and she clenches her fists so hard she can feel the skin on her palms break under her nails. “It’s getting worse,” she says. “The Upside Down is spreading further—the air’s already bad, feel it? Not long until our lights don’t work anymore.”

On cue, the flashlight in Dustin’s hand flickers. He smacks it. The beam stabilizes. “Fun,” he says—sarcastically, El remembers the word.

“We have to keep moving,” she tells them, and even Lucas, worrying over the gash on Max’s head, nods.

“Can you walk?” he asks.

She bats him away. “It got my face, not my legs. I’m fine.”

El can tell she’s lying—especially when Max falls into step beside her and throws an arm around her shoulders. Wordlessly, she wraps an arm around Max’s waist, supporting her weight.

“Where do you think they are?” Dustin wonders. “Mike, Will, Steve?”

“It’s some horror movie shit,” Lucas adds. “We lost Steve and the rest of them first, now Mike and Will. What next?”

“That’s why we have to stick together,” Max says simply. “If we make it to where it’s all coming from, we can stop the Mind Flayer. The others will make their way to the nexus, too. They gotta.”

She doesn’t mention how without Will, El’s powers still don’t work. She doesn’t mention the worry they all feel about Steve, Nancy, Robin, Jonathan, and _Joyce_—

El takes a breath, ignoring the sting. After Hopper, after _everything_…

“They’re gonna be okay,” Max says lowly. “Joyce. Will. Jonathan. You’re not gonna lose your family again.”

“I really hope so.” She shakes her head. “But you guys are my family too. So you have to stay with me.”

Max blinks. Holds out a pinky. “Lucas, Dustin, c’mere.”

El looks at her, puzzled. “What?”

Max grins, unthinkable in this vast hellish landscape, the woods that seem to stretch on forever and grow with each passing, non-concrete second. “We’re promising. We’re with you.”

Lucas and Dustin link pinkies with her unhesitatingly, and Dustin gives El rueful smile. “You gotta do it, too.”

She reaches out, and it’s at that moment that the ground spins under her heel and knocks her feet out from under her, sending her sprawling. She’s frozen in terror—and time, perhaps—as the ground buckles beneath the other three. She screams, scrambling to reach them, but the ground is inclined like a mountain and her limbs remain lethargic. She feels sluggish, struggling forward, and then the world skips like movies do when Will hits the fast-forward button. The sudden jolt sends her slamming into the dirt, and by the time she regains her senses, her friends have vanished.

“Max!” she dares to shout. Let the monster find her. “Lucas! Dustin!”

Leaves crunch under her feet as she staggers across unsteady ground, nearly keeling over in terror when there’s a faint cough from her left.

“Mike?” she gasps, somehow spotting him in the shadows of a tree. She races over to his side—his shirt is soaked in blood, and there’s red smeared around his mouth. His eyes flutter open.

“Oh, hi,” he says, and when he smiles weakly his teeth are stained. “You should go.”

“What the hell?” she asks, balling up her jacket and pressing it to his wound, ignoring the way the chill bites at her skin. “Where’s Will?”

Mike’s eyelids slide shut again, and El shakes him as gently as possible. He coughs, barely conscious, and another spray of blood puts red freckles on his chin. “I made him go. To the nexus.”

“And he _went_?” El can’t imagine it—her brother, leaving Mike bloodied on the ground. His best friend.

Mike lifts a hand, snaps his fingers weakly. “I made him, and time flipped. Don’t be mad. Just…” His eyes screw closed and he coughs again, his breath rattling.

She reaches to lift him. “Mike, we need to get you out of here.”

“No!” Mike insists, and he shoves her with more strength than she thought he could possibly have. He falls back against the tree, his face paler than ever, dark rings under his eyes. “You have to help him.”

“Mike—“

“_Please_,” Mike says. “El, please, there’s nowhere for you to take me, and if you leave then Will’s _alone_. Please, don’t leave him.”

_Don’t leave him._ El and Will are the only ones who stand a chance with this thing, and only _together_. Mike’s right about that. But he always cares about them more than himself.

“Don’t worry about me,” Mike pleads. “Just find him.”

“Okay,” she says, and those two syllables are the hardest she’s ever had to muster. “Okay.”

She starts to say something else—_stay safe, I love you, I promise I’ll find him_—when her breath stutters on its next beat.

“Tell Will, just in case,” Mike tells her, and El opens her mouth to ask _what_. Time has skipped another beat, Mike lags behind as El continues on, El just knows it. But Mike never has the chance to give her his message, because she blinks, the forest blurs, and Mike is gone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> goddamn I love writing in El's pov.  
I actually went a little over my word limit here so I had to cut it down, but it turned out better than I thought it would! hopefully I can get the next chapter out fairly quickly.
> 
> hope you enjoyed!


	3. Robin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Robin's life has been infinitely more weird since meeting Steve. But outrunning monsters in an evil-infested forest, trying to find Joyce's missing kids, is a whole other story.

This is really, really weird.

Since meeting Steve, to be fair, nothing has been normal. But this? The smoggy sky that’s too dark for what should be noon, the bitterness of the air, the tingle up her spine that makes her feel as if something is watching them…

She shivers.

“You okay?”

It’s Nancy’s voice, which... Robin will never get used to. Nancy Wheeler, the _priss_, clutching a gun and looking vigilant in this new landscape, asking her a question. Nancy isn’t at ease, to be sure, but her limbs are loose and battle-ready in a way Robin didn’t think was real outside of the movies.

“Fine,” she answers, even if she isn’t, and Nancy seems to accept that, turning away and taking Jonathan’s hand.

“Just remember to keep an eye out,” Jonathan says over his shoulder, as if they don’t know. “Not just for monsters, but for the rest of the group. We weren’t supposed to get separated.”

Steve snorts under his breath, but Robin is standing right beside him. She arches an eyebrow at him.

“Something funny?” she asks, not exactly challenging but certainly confused.

“What do you think?” Steve snaps, and Robin is slightly taken aback. For all their playful bickering, Steve doesn’t usually get angry with her. “The kids are gone. Joyce is gone. That means Nancy’s brother is gone, Jonathan’s whole _family_ is gone, and we don’t know when or where we are, and all I have is this stupid _bat_, and none of the kids have weapons—”

“Jesus, Steve,” Nancy interrupts, and Robin has this bizarre moment of _I don’t think Jesus is here right now_. “Just relax, okay? As long as Will and El are together, the kids will be fine. They’re smart, they’re resourceful, they’re gonna put it all together and meet us at the nexus.”

“Nancy—“

“Steve,” she says again, more firmly this time. “We have to trust them. We have to trust that they’ll meet us there. Okay?”

Her voice shakes on the last _okay_, and for a moment Robin sees through the facade. Nancy Wheeler—the straight-A student with a pistol and badass attitude—is scared. Maybe not for herself, but for her little brother. It’s the same look that creeps over Steve’s face when Dustin gets hurt. Steve must notice it, too. He didn’t love this girl for nothing, after all. So he nods, and takes a breath, and continues forward.

The ground trembles underfoot, and as the air gets thicker thinking gets hazier. “Guys,” she says, and her mouth feels stuffed with cotton. “Is it just me, or is it getting harder to move?”

“It’s definitely getting harder to move,” Nancy agrees, and she visibly grasps Jonathan’s hand even tighter. “I’m not sure—whoa!”

She’s cut off when her knees buckle and she falls to the ground, bringing Jonathan down with her. Robin is about to ask what happened when the wave hits her too and she stumbles, knocking into Steve. She catches herself before she can join the other three, a hand to her head. There’s something behind a tree. She points. “What the hell is that?”

Nancy twists out from under Jonathan to look, and before Robin can blink, Nancy lets out a strangled noise she can’t begin to name and darts forward, not bothering to brush the dirt from her jacket. When Robin makes her way over after pulling Steve and Jonathan to their feet, she sees why.

“Mike, Mike,” Nancy whispers over and over, and she sounds near tears. “Mike, wake up, please, Mike—“

“Shut up,” he rasps suddenly, his teeth red with blood. “Nance, I love you, but you’re loud.”

“Mike,” she says again, and Robin would not call Nancy hysterical but she sounds damn near hysterical right now. “Jesus Christ, what happened?”

Mike grimaces, looking far too old for his fifteen years. “Long story.” He coughs, a rattling sound. “What matters is that Will and El made it to the nexus.”

“They’re together?” Jonathan asks, disbelieving yet hopeful.

“They weren’t,” Mike admits, and only when his hand moves to clutch his side does Robin notice that his shirt isn’t actually red, it’s just stained. “But they both went to the nexus. I told them to.”

Jonathan opens his mouth to say something else, but Steve is faster. “Great, if they’re okay then we need to get you the hell out of here or you’re going to _die_.”

Nancy makes a keening noise and Robin can’t stand it, just wants to get out of this forest, wants to get back to her movie store job and her beautiful Alyssa and no _dying kids_. “Nancy, you have the weapon, let me and Jonathan carry him.”

Nancy steps back reluctantly and Robin helps Jonathan lift his brother’s best friend. She loops an arm under his shoulders, carefully avoiding the puncture in his side, and cradles his head. She’s never been particularly good with kids. Manipulating them? With ice cream, certainly. Getting along with them? Sure thing. But _caring_ for them? That’s something else new that Steve has brought.

“You’re gonna get out of here,” she tells Mike, whose dark hair is matted down and caked in dirt. “We’re gonna get you help.”

He smiles weakly at her, and the blood around his mouth looks like the lipstick on the girls Robin liked to kiss in her store after hours sometimes (at least before Alyssa). She doesn’t ask, it doesn’t matter right now—Mike seems to hear the question anyway.

“It wasn’t El,” he tells her, and his eyes are sliding shut. “It was Will. The whole time… and I never got to tell him, until it was—“

“It’s _not_ too late,” Robin insists, because she’s heard his speech out of her own mouth too many times before. Mike’s glazed gaze is still skeptical, but as his eyes close the rest of the way, adrenaline rushes through Robin’s blood. _It’s not too late_.

She walks faster.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> last chapter will wrap it all up. it'll hopefully be soon. thank you for reading!


	4. Joyce

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Joyce looks for her children in the mist.

She doesn’t remember the air ever being this thick. Then again, the last time she waded through monster-territory she was in a safety suit, shielded from the toxins in whatever passes for oxygen on the other side. She realizes, suddenly, that not once has the question of her own health crossed her mind as she trudges through the woods—only that of her children.

_Will has already breathed this air for days on end,_ she thinks, with horrific recall of how pale and fragile he’d looked in his hospital bed. _And Jonathan has never been here before. And El doesn’t have her powers._

She clamps her mouth shut to ensure that her tortured noise doesn’t escape. If there was one thing Hopper taught her: for the children, do anything. He showed her that with El, and now she’s gone and fucked it all up, she’s _lost_ her _daughter_, not just her daughter, but _Hopper’s_ daughter, _Terry’s _daughter, how could she have been so careless—

_Breathe, Mom,_ a voice in the back of her head says. It sounds like Jonathan. She listens to it, sucking in a breath regardless of the spores floating around, counting every blessing she has. Her children are smart, and resourceful, and powerful. Will knows exactly what to do here. As long as El is with them, they’ll be fine. And Jonathan will protect them.

She trusts her children. She _has_ to trust them.

_How did I find him last time?_ she asks herself, peering through the woods, and as if the world is responding to her the next step she takes goes through the floor. She stumbles as the ground shakes, clapping her hands over her ears as voices intrude her head—whispers, all familiar: Hopper, and Nancy, and Lucas, and _Will_. Others, too, not that she pays much attention. They aren’t clear enough for her to make out any words, but she pushes herself to her feet and follows the sound of her son’s voice.

“Will?” she ventures as his voice gets louder. “Is that you?” She entertains the thought that this might be a trap, but the Mind Flayer has never stolen voices before. _It’s not his style,_ she thinks ruefully. _He’d rather just stab me._ The other voices fade out as she continues walking, but Will’s gets louder, and she shouts his name again.

_“Mom?”_ she hears, reverberating around nothing, and her words catch in her throat.

“Will!” she calls back. “El! Jonathan!”

The noise in her head seems to reach some pain threshold and she winces, but it’s at that moment that the fog dissipates—instantly.

“Did it work?” someone says, and _thank god_, she knows it’s El.

Joyce races over to her daughter, who is holding Will’s hand, and crushes them in a hug. “You’re alive,” she says, and the words _you did it_ don’t even make her top ten list of what she wants to tell them right now. She doesn’t need to, anyway—it’s clear enough by the way the vines are withering and the clouds are clearing; how the air feels less stale and the forest begins to light up with starlight.

“We were so worried about you, Mom,” Will says into her ear, El nodding furiously, and Joyce can’t hold back the laugh that bursts out of her.

“I was _so_ much more worried about you,” she counters. She pulls back. “You were _not_ supposed to be alone, where are the others?”

“Jonathan is with Robin and Nancy and Steve,” El says, and she swipes a sleeve across her eyes. “Will and Mike got separated first, then me. Jonathan is fine.”

“Don’t get dirt in your eyes, you’ll get an infection,” Joyce tells her gently. “You can cry.” Then her eyes land on her son and she nearly yelps. “There’s blood on your face!” she says, although at closer inspection it’s just on his mouth. “Are you hurt?”

Impossibly, a flush creeps across Will’s face. “No!” he assures her quickly. “No, it’s not mine.”

“It’s Mike’s, Ma,” El says, and somehow a grin spreads across her face. She’s _teasing_ Will.

“Shut _up_, El,” Will hisses, still blushing. “He was _hurt_, we need to make sure he’s in the hospital!”

“Will,” Joyce says, still thoroughly confused, “I’m sure that with the Upside-Down’s influence gone, the others found him. If we get out of the woods I can radio Nancy.” She taps the radio on her hip, stolen from Will’s room. Since the “nexus,” as the children had taken to calling it, collapsed, it hadn’t crackled once.

There’s anxiety in his face, still, but it’s El who steps up this time. “You did everything exactly right,” she tells him, her palms pressed to his cheeks. “He’ll be fine, because we got the Upside-Down out.”

“You’re right,” Will says, unconvinced. “You’re right, he’s fine. We did it all right.”

Joyce understands, suddenly, why their new neighbors assume her youngest children are twins. If she didn’t know any better, she’d say that herself. “Come on,” she gestures, and she feels like a mother hen, collecting them beneath her wings to usher them across a busy road.

El takes Will’s hand again, and they walk out of the darkness.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> at long last, we have arrived at the end. thanks for reading!

**Author's Note:**

> comments and kudos are, as always, appreciated.  
find me on tumblr, my main is [@perseusjaxon](https://perseusjaxon.tumblr.com) and my writing blog is [@lowriting](https://lowriting.tumblr.com)!


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